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To Boil Potatoes

Potatoes boiled in salted water until tender, then sprinkled with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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To Boil Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of salt to the boiling water.

  3. Either peel the potatoes or leave them unpeeled.

Cook

  1. Add the potatoes to the boiling water and cook for about 30 minutes until tender.

Drain and serve

  1. Drain the water and sprinkle a little salt over the potatoes.

  2. Gently shake the pot to coat the potatoes with salt.

  3. Remove the lid and let the potatoes steam for 5 minutes over low heat.

  4. Serve immediately.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy body of the dish, which cooks until soft and tender in the water.
Salt
Seasons the potatoes both in the cooking water and as a finishing sprinkle after draining.

The step that matters

Cooking until tender. Potatoes of unequal size cook at different rates, so some may stay firm while others overcook and break apart. Choosing equal sizes helps the whole batch reach tenderness together.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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